Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1913 — Page 2

DUEL BETWEEN SHARK and SWORDFISH

OUR fi Ihi n g . ~ smack, anchored off the FlorIda coast, was t - lazily rolling in the gentle swells of the sea, with Its idle sails flapping and anchor chain squeaking dismally. A small boat had put off from the vessel and two of the rowers were watching several of the crew disporting in the warm water. With them was a powerful Newfoundland dog whose thrashing and barking added to the interest of the scene. Suddenly one of the rowers glancing toward the distant shore caught sight of a peculiar trail of foam that seemed to be advancing rapidly. For a moment he was sllentandthoughtful, but when the flnlike projection above the water came into full view he set up a yell dt warning. “Sharks! Sharks I ” That was sufficient' to electrify the swimmers. With one accord they swam with all their might toward the small boat. They reached it and were hauled aboard by their companions before the shark could get within striking distance. But not so the dog. Not realizing the danger, the Newfoundland barked and swam around the boat, accepting the calls of the men as a part of the game. Meanwhile the sharp approached rapidly, and the men could see the great dorsal fin clerving the water like a knife. But it seemed impossible to rescue the dog in time. The great man eater knew this, and never for an instant checked' its course. When within a few yards of the frantic dog the fin disappeared below the surface and every man knew that the shark was sinking to make the fatal lunge. At the very moment one of the men caught the dog l?y the collar the open jaws of the shark, with their double row of incurving teeth swept upward. There seemed no chance to prevent a tragedy, but one of the sailors, quickwitted and alert, thrust a long oar straight down at the terrible jaws. More through luck, than premeditation, the heavy oar struck the lower jaw a glancing blow and then slipped directly into the mouth. There was a snap and jerk which nearly threw the sailor overboard. When he raised the oar from the water, it was to find it snapped in Jwo as cleanly as if cut by an ax. The next minute the men hauled the dripping, panting Newfoundland dog into the boat They tried to frighten the big man cater away with their oars, splashing and shouting vigorously, but the shark was not frightened by. this demonstration. It was too enraged by the wound it had received from the blade of the oar and too hungry to retreat at once. While these tactics were going on the rowers were so intently watching the shark that they took little note of anything else. Suddenly another long, powerfully built creature swam leisurely between the boat and the angry shark. It looked for an instant like another huge man eater. Apparently attracted by the commotion the newcomer swept close to the boat to get a good view. The •hark, at the same instant, having defeated of its attempts to get at its prey, turned viciously upon the other fish. Its anger and blindness apparently made it less cautious than usual. With , swift movement it lunger toward the other fish, and its powerful jaws snapsped together just as Its prey caught .sight of it and darted forward. The next moment a long, powerful I swordfish leaped a foot out of the water and began thrashing the sea into I a white foam. The water was in--stantly dyed crimson. In its upward 'leap the sailors had seen that part of ,lts tall was missing. The shark bad caught the swordfish off guard and snapped off fully six finches of its tail. It was from this wound that the blood came. Now, the swordfish is usutlly a iqulet creature, rarely ascending to

FOR FRESH DATES

t Some soil in desert oases has not sufficient heat to mature dates. This is due to unusual radiation, depending upon local conditions. A way has been found to mature the fruit artificially. however, and being simple and inexpensive, it to likely to be put to practical use. A metal -ven is used of the same temperature as the •oil under the most favorable conditions Here the date, are kept for

the surface, and disposed to let other finny inhabitants of the deep alone if they do not mollest it. But when in search of food or when its anger is aroused by an attack it is capable of executing some pretty rapid and long sustained motions. With a movement so swift that tfie eye could barely follow it through the water, the giant swordfish dashed toward the shark with its powerful lance aimed for the other’s vitals. But sharks are quick acting fish, too, and the big man eater thrown suddenly on The “defensive dodged and completely turned over. The sword struck it a slanting blow on the side and ripped a surface wound a yard long. At the same moment the jaws of the shark snapped viciously, and another portion of the lacerated tail was snipped off. The two combatants remained thus for ten seconds facing each other and waiting for the next round. The sailors, forgetting their own danger, watched the two fighters with fascinated gaze. Once more the swordfish began the attack.'* With incredible swiftness it turned and darted away, as if disgusted with the fight, and then swung around and came for the shark at the speed of a railroad train. The shark knew that it was powerless to avoid that terrible sword except by dodging. When the swordfish was within a yard of it the man eater sprang upward and tried to escape the deadly weapon. Fully two feet out of the water the shark leaped. But once more the sword raked its side, cutting and tearing through skin and flesh until the blood poured forth in a stream. This second wound brought all the fighting blood of the shark to the surface. Taking advantage of the muddled water created by the commotion, it plunged downward to a great depth, and then sprang upward with the huge jaws extended. The swordfish lost sight of it for an instant, and barely escaped being cut in two as the double row of teeth closed. There was another swift and dexterous move on the part of the swordfish to escape. But this time the teeth grazed its side and ripped a piece of skin from it. The shark, taking advantage of the situation, made a frantic close quarter attack. It snapped and lunged viciously, missing the swordfish each time by only a fraction of an inch. The latter dodged and leaped sideways to escape the cruel jaws. The fight was so fierce that neither combatant could keep up the pace for long. At one moment the two big creatures floundered around on the surface of the water, and the next dropped entirely out of sight, but the foaming water rising to the surface showed that there was no letup in the struggle. Suddenly the swordfish swept toward the boat, as if it intended to plunge straight through it, but it dipped at the critical moment and disappeared under it. Close behind it the shark came, and followed beneath the boat' But it was less accurate In its movements, and its body struck the bottom of the boat a resounding whack. Temporarily disconcerted by this accident, the shark turned to snap angrily at the thing that bad struck its head. That interruption, short as it was, gave the swordfish the time to gain on its pursuer. When it reappeared on the opposite side of the boat it swerved sharply and darted away to a safe distance. It was out .of harm’s way now, for in a test of speed and endurance the shark could not hope to win. Once more the watchers expected to see the combat terminate by the retreat of the discomfited swordfish.

three days. At the end of thia time the fruit is sweet and aromatic. It is predicted that this will do away with the dried and pressed dates with which we are all familiar, as this system restores the freshness to fruit which has been too long upon the trees m the sunlight, the artificial humidity insuring juiciness and flavor. It is expected also that ultimately fruit may be exported in these ovens

For nearly five minutes the two combatants appeared almost motion* less in the water. From the sides of each little crimson eddies ascended, showing how badly both had been Injured. It was a drawn battle, and both seemed disinclined to renew the conflict But clearly one of them had to be the victor. The swordfish slowly moved off, with scarcely a perceptible swish of tail or fins. It seemed as if it was being moved by some under water force that had no connection with its body. Perhaps a hundred feet away It checked its movements and once more lay quiet, the shark watching it carefully and anxiously. It ’ knew better than the sailors the meaning of these tactics. - The swordfish began to circle around again in a quick, jerky way, as if trying its power of speed. The shark remained stationary, waiting for the attack. With ever increasing circles and speed the swordfish continued its movements. Its speed at times seemed almost incredible. It swept in a clean circle around the boat, plunged deep into the water, and then leaped up toward the sunface. - Apparently satisfied that it still had the sped and strength necessary for a continuance of the fight, it approach* ed close to Its waiting enemy. It played tag with the shark for a few moments, dashing in and away as if to test its courage, but at such a distance that the shark made no effort to pursue. . Then suddenly with a swish of its fins the swordfish turned and darted straight for the shark. It never swerved once from a straight line, but shot forward like an arrow from a bow. The shark saw the approaching attack and once more sought to dodge the terrible sword. But this time, either through clumsiness or weakness it was slow in its movements. It delayed its jump a second too long. There was a thud, a violent impact of something hard against flesh, and then a mighty motion of the water. The two big fish thrashed about so violently that for a moment the watchers could not tell which had the advantage. Blood and foam were whipped together. The waves treated by the struggle rocked the boat. When for an instant the two combatants ceased their fighting the men got a glimpse of the true state of affairs. The sword of the smaller creature was sunk to the very hilt in the body of the shark, the end protruding from the opposite side. The blow has been delivered squarely In the side of the shark, and it was doomed. There was an ineffectual struggle on the part of the shark to pull away from its adversary. It”threshed the water violently with its tail, gasped and spurted blood from its mouth and then lay quite still on the surface. The blow was mortal, and death came quickly. The big, heavy body was seen to jerk and move violently even after death, but the movements were caused by the swordfish trying to withdraw its long lance. Again and again it jerked and tried to back away from its enemy. But the sword was too deeply embedded in the flesh. Its loss of blood and the fearful wounds it had received from the shark rendered the swordfish helpless. Its own mortal wound had been delivered before the last attack, and It was now only a matter of time before it would succumb. Out of mercy for the victorious creature, the sailors rowed up to the two and with a few well directed blows on the head with their oars they put the swordfish out of its agony. No strength which they could exert would serve to release the sword. Later the two carcasses were towed to the side of the ship and the shark was cut in half before the sword could be removed. By actual measurement it proved to be nearly four feet la length, and the big man eating shark weighed a ton and a half in bone and flesh.

to long distances, although In that case a mfin would have to be delegated to attend to the oven to register its temperature and to see that the fruit did not remain too long in it— Harper’s Weekly.

Have Often Wondered.

“Now they have compiled a dictionary of the monkey language. Ail fooltohness; no demand for such a thing." "Ob. 1 don’t know. Many people would like to know what to being sung at the musical comedies.”

USE DYNAMITE IN NEW WAY

Takes Place of Saw In Solving Bridge Construction Problem in the West. Railroading in the west continually presents new problems to the construction engineer, but the use of dynamite in place of a saw was tried for the first time on a Santa Fe bridge over the San Joaqiiih river, near Fresno, Cal. Concrete abutments and piers had been built .under an old wooden trestletype bridge and the principal girders of the new steel structure prepared and riveted together at a distance ready to be lowered into place from derrick trains. All the earlier stages of the new bridge had been constructed with the wooden bridge as a falsework and without interruption to traffic. But the floor of the wooden bridge was 15 feet higher than the new steel structure was. intended to be. To shorten the supports by sawing would take several days and tie up traffic. The engineers got around the dlfficulty by running the derricks out to the proper points and then placing a small charge of dynamite in each of the wooden supports of.the old bridge just 15 feet below the roadbed. The dynamite shots were discharged simultaneously, t<he old bridge fell, and the entire steel structure dropped into place at once. It took but three hours then to lay the ties and rails. —Popular Mechanics. >

HELPING THE FARM INDUSTRY

Is Business Proposition With the Railroads and Much Money Is Spent in That Way. For a generation or more the railroads of this country have been making efforts to increase the number of farmers in certain regions, thus trying to promote agriculture, and through greater agricultural prosperity, to increase their revenues derived from hauling farm products. Within the past decade these efforts to encourage agriculture have been extended to include Instructions in methods of farming, investigation of farming possibilities of a region, assistance in organizing agricultural associations, co-operation with state and county fairs, employment of farm labor, aid in finding markets, and other helpful lines of work. These projects are not confined to railroad companies; they are, however, the most prominent of the several classes of business concerns engaged in similar work. _ This promotion work on the part of the railroads is a business proposition. Improvement in agriculture means more traffic, and for this reason large sums of money are being expended systematically by numerous companies.— Exchange.

Some Improvement Since.

Dr. Helen L. Sumner collated some figures for the department of labor, which set forth that at Paterson, in 1835, women and children had to be at work at 4:30 in the morning. They were allowed half an hour for breakfast and three-quarters of an hour for dinner, and then worked “as long as they could see.” They struck that year, however, and their hours were reduced to 11%. In Philadelphia, in 1833, the hours were said to be 13. At about the same time the hours at the Schuylkill factory were from “sunrise to sunset, from the 21st of March to the 20th of September, inclusively, and from sunrise until eigh| o’clock p. m. during the remainder of the year.” On Saturdays the mill was stopped one hour before sunset “for the purpose of cleaning the machinery."

Preserving Valuable Relics.

A very complete collection of Indian stone inscriptions is being made for the United States museum, and this is being done in a novel manner without destroying the original. A soft paper has been prepared for the purpose and this is moistened and placed over the inscriptions and pressed into the interstices. Here it is allowed to dry, after which it is carefully removed and the shell used as a mold from which a cast is made. The latter shows all the details of the carvings as well as the markings on the surface of the stone and after the casts have been painted it is difficult to detect the imposition.

Walking to Business.

Not so many years ago the man of business walked to business. I played tennis with him —a strenuous game, and he was seventy-odd in years. He had built up a business in St Martin’s lane. He lived in Camberwell New road. And every day he walked from Camberwell to his business and back again, having done hto day’s work, with no meal between hto breakfast and hto dinner at Camberwell, and hto fun was to find always a new route for his walk to and fro. Hto. walks brought a wonderful knowledge of London —to say nothing of health and longevity.—London Chronicle.

Weight of Trains.

The extreme weight and speed of modern railway trains to a train weighing 400 tons tooving at a velocity of seventy-five miles an hour. Many people are amazed at the destruction effected by railway trains when they ptrike an object at rest, such as a delayed train. A mass of 400 tons propelled at seventy-five miles an hour contains energy nearly twice as great as that of a 2,000-pouad shot fired from a 100-ton Armstrong gun. No wonder that such a train proves a terribly destructive projectile.

Water Power of World Wide Effects

IN THE heart of the United States, but at a point which is one of the nearest by transportation routes to the countries of Central and South America, is being built a giant water power plant which must greatly affect for good not only its immediate environment, the Mississippi valley, but the whole nation and all the nations in Pan America. The colossal size qf the water power there would cause appreciable effects anywhere in the world, and it is located almost exactly at the point where its commercial influence may be exerted most easily and effectively upon world commerce. The achievement nearing completion is the damming of the mighty Mississippi river, harnessing it to-tur-bine wheels and electric generators and distributing its tremendous power over one hundred miles and more of the most efficient portion of the United States on a direct traffic line to the rest of the western hemisphere. It is not only an unparalleled engineering achievement, but also perhaps the greatest single economic force flung into the world by the hand of man, excepting only the Panama canal. Nearly Mlle Long. The basis of the water power development at Keokuk, in the southeastern corner of the state of lowa, is a great dam extending for ninetenths of a mile from the Illinois bluff to its junction with the titanic power house near the lowa shore. This dam is a composite structure of 119 arched spans, all alike, with piers six feet thick thirty feet apart, and spillways in the spans, all alike, over which the water will flow. This dam is a monolith of massive concrete set down several feet Into the hard rock bottom of the Mississippi, but impounding the water by its immense weight. The structure, with the exterior appearance of a bridge, is 53 feet high, 42 feet wide at the bottom, and 29 feet wide on top; the spillways between the piers are 32 feet high, fill the width of the dam at the bottom, have vertical upstream faces, and their downstream face is an ogee curve which delivers the water at the bottom horizontally to the river current On top of each spillway will be a steel gate 11 feet high. By varying the number of these gates, which are open and closed, the amount of water, flowing over the dam will be regulated, with the result that at varying stages of the river the pool above the dam will have always an unvarying depth and its surface will always remain at the same place. The water wheel itself is another example of overcoming the impossible, for experts said that it was impossible to build a turbine which would meet the unusual conditions there. But Chief Engineer Cooper called a council of war and a little later rose from the head of that table with a new design of turbine which tests show has 86 per cent of efficiency as compared with the next best result ever attained of 80 per cent, and a textbook figure of 75 per cent of efficiency as the norm to be used in engineering calculations. The 30 turbine wheels in the Keokuk power house are several times as large in dimensions as any ever made before. Each is at the lower end of a shaft 25 inches in diameter, on the upper end of which is the revolving part of the electric generator standing on the power-house floor. The revolving shaft, with its machines at each end, weighs- about 552,000 pounds, and It is supported on one bearing which is lubricated by forcing oil between its surfaces at a pressure of 250 pounds to the square inch. From this bearing is steel cone carries the weight to a huge ring below, and the total weight of one turbine unit is about 882,000 pounds. The lower ring Itself weighs about 111,000 pounds, and between it and an upper ring of similar size is a steel cylinder embedded in the massive concrete, which is the basement of the power house. The 30 turbines develop over 800,000 horsepower. and this is increased by two auxiliary smaller wheels, which also energize the exciters of the electrio generators. This is‘over three times as much power as is developed in any one other water-power riant in the

world. After deducting slight losses) of energy and very large 200,000 horsepower will be sold so commercial use. At the lower end of the great power l house is a colossal lock with the sama width as those at Panama and with a| lift of 40 feet Instead of the lift of 281 feet 4 inches in any one lock at the; canal. Beside the lock will be a mam-i moth dry dock for building and re-i pairing boats. There is also a long! and high wall protecting the tracks of a railroad alongshore, which must be? elevated above the new water level, above the dam, and an ice fender like; a concrete bridge over a kilometer 1 long is anothr part of the work there l in the bottom of the Mississippi river, built to keep ice and debris of alii kinds out of the turbines. At its western end this largest of; power dams joins the power house,, which stretches almost at right angles; down the river for almost a third of ai mile —accurately, 1,718 feet —with a< width of about 133 feet and a height of over 177 feet. The water from .thelmmense forebay between tire power house and the lowa shore passes through thirty arched portals,; behind which are buttressed, on their l outer ends, the steel rods acting as I strainers. Behind each arched por-i tai are four intakes to each turbine I water wheel, each intake being 22 feetl high. Work of Many Years. The origin of that water power development is most interesting. It isi the result of remarkably persistent la-> bor on the part of the people of that; community through several decades.; In the middle of the last century the; value of the vast quantity of power l going to waste there was recognized! and various unsuccessful movements; to utilize it were launched. Then ten years were spent in work which was; successful at last. A corporation; which really was a trustee for the peo--pie made preliminary surveys, collect-! ed data, obtained a franchise act from; congress, and searched for capital to' build the water power installation. It obtained its funds from the municipal treasuries of Keokuk and of Hamilton, 111., across the river. It succeeded only after it interested in the proj- 1 ect Mr. Hugh L. Cooper, who organ--ized the present proprietor company; only after much labor and many re-; buffs, and succeeded finally chiefly because of his record of successfull building of water power plants at Nl-i agara Falls, Sao Paulo and other! places. It is Intended to start the turblnesi and generators in the mammoth pow-| er house early next summer, with l the president of the United States! pulling the lever to start the turbines,, while, he stands surrounded by the) governors of all the states in the I Mississippi valley.

He Knew Pounder.

The managing editor was dlsapJ pointed and be told the city editor so. "Why didn’t you print that story young Pounder turned in last night?" he wanted to know. "Which story?” 1 asked the city editor. "The one about the crazy man scattering money through the downtown streets. That! was a good story, and full of interest. It would have been exclusive, too. I see the other paper hasn’t got it" 1 "Well. I didn’t print It because I thought it one of Pounder's fakes.” "What made you think so?" "It stands to reason. If jt had been true Pound-I er would have been following him yet.*

Translated.

The Boston lady entered the department store. Approaching the gentlemanly floor walker, she said: "I desire to purchase a argenteous, truncated cone, convex out Its summit and eemlperforatad with symmetrical indentations.’’ "Yes, madam," replied the gentlemanly floor walker. “You will find the thimbles two counters to the rear.”

Many Abandon Religious Faith.

Germany, according to the statistics of the empire, has an increasing number of persons without any religious profession. At least they are so registered. The number has grown from 17,000 in 1907 to nearly 106,000.